


What Could It Have Been Like?

by BucksomeBarnes (Freckled_Halos)



Series: the Assembled Avengers Initiative [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Conversations, M/M, Rating for Language, Reminiscing, admitting stuff, but ends happy, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 17:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15248361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freckled_Halos/pseuds/BucksomeBarnes
Summary: Steve and Bucky having a quiet conversation about how things could have gone if they had both survived the war...and how they would have felt about it. An unpleasant memory resurfaces.





	What Could It Have Been Like?

**Author's Note:**

> One of my favorite things to write is dialogue. I love exploring characters' emotions and thoughts and to really think deeply about how they would feel about specific topics. So this is just them, sitting at the table, chatting for a little while.

Steve sat at their dining room table, poking his fork mindlessly at his dinner.

Bucky looked up from the chair next to him, mouth full, and eyed Steve’s expression.

Swallowing, Bucky asked, “everything alright?”

Steve’s eyebrows screwed up and his mouth turned down. Not looking at Bucky, Steve answered, “I don’t know.”

Bucky put his fork down and shifted his body towards Steve. “What’s goin’ on?”

Steve let out a sigh and shrugged, finally glancing up to give Bucky a sad smile. “Do you ever just think about all the stuff we missed?”

“What kind of stuff?”

“You know, not just the historical events and inventions over the past few decades, but the human things. Like watching your sister grow up. Or being around for any of our buddies getting married and having kids…”

Bucky just nodded slowly, eyes sliding back to the plate in front of him. Suddenly, he wasn’t very hungry anymore. “I know,” he whispered.

Steve closed his eyes. “And you…you were awake during some of that stuff, not knowing who you were—”

“Steve, don’t.”

“If I had just looked for you—”

Bucky slammed a hand down on the table, startling Steve’s eyes open. “I said, don’t.”

There was a long pause until Steve finally looked back up at Bucky who was staring at Steve with old eyes, threatening to spill over with tears. Steve’s entire face was dull and tired, like the past 70 years of loss hit him all at once.

“Do you ever think about what it would have been like? To not have shipped out at all? If you hadn’t enlisted and I never got the serum, what our lives would have been like…”

“You can’t do that, Steve,” answered Bucky, running a hand down his face. “Thinking like that’ll drive you crazy. We can’t do anything about what’s already happened and dwelling on it is only going to make you feel worse.”

Steve shifted in his chair and looked down at his hands resting on the table top between him and his half-eaten dinner. “Would we have stayed together?”

Taken aback, Bucky asked, “what?”

Steve let a breath out and furrowed his eyebrows, still avoiding eye contact. “Would we…would we have gotten married to some girls? Gotten a ‘good job’ after the war, moved out of Brooklyn, had a few kids like everyone else?”

Bucky studied Steve’s face in profile. The ends of his light hair poking out past his forehead which was wrinkled in thought. His bright blue eyes, focused on the table, dark lashes extending further than they had any right to. His nose, with the slight bump in the top of the bridge. Bucky couldn’t remember how many times Steve had gotten his nose broken in some dumb fight, each time getting more and more distorted. The serum seemed to have cleaned that up a little though. His mouth was relaxed, softening the curve of his jaw, and was slightly downturned, full pink lips parted slightly.

“I don’t know, Steve,” Bucky answered quietly. “But if we had, I don’t think either of us would have been very happy about it, to be honest.”

That made Steve smile faintly as he finally raised his head to look Bucky in the eyes. “You’re probably right.”

Bucky pulled a small grin himself. “Can you picture it? You, with some white picket fence life with two-point-five kids and a doting housewife.”

Steve wrinkled his nose at the thought. “Me? What about you? I don’t think you ever went on more than two dates with the same girl. Always busy studying, playing baseball, spending time with your family...when would you ever had had the time to find yourself a good wife and settle down?”

“I was never one for ‘settling down,’ huh?”

“Nah,” Steve replied, his gaze softening.

After a quiet pause, Bucky finally responded, “maybe it’s better that things happened the way they did. Maybe this is the only way we could’ve…”

“Could’ve what?”

“Been together.” Bucky blushed the tiniest amount and looked at Steve with big eyes. “Openly. Not in a ‘sneak around after work in the dark, cheating on our wives’ kind of way.” 

Steve studied Bucky’s expression, a mixture of sadness and relief.

Bucky continued, “I mean, let’s be honest, Steve, you were the only person I’d ever really loved. Still are. There were girls we both liked to spend time with or look at and hell, there were some guys too, but I can’t even imagine being in love with someone else.”

Steve grinned and leaned in to give Bucky a gentle kiss. Nudging Bucky’s face with his own, Steve replied, “I know. Me neither.”

Bucky held Steve’s face there, clasping a hand on the back of his neck. “I’m not saying I’m happy about all the life we’ve lived, awake or not. Mine certainly wasn’t ideal. And I’m definitely not saying it’s better that I had…eliminated…all the people I did, but if this was the only path to you and me really being together, forever, I’d do it a million times over.”  

Steve smiled sadly and closed his eyes, resting his forehead against Bucky’s. “I know what you mean.”

“Did you think about it back then?” Bucky asked. “Before the war, about us?”

“Of course I did,” Steve answered, pulling away so he could look Bucky in the eyes. “Didn’t you?”

Bucky shrugged tiredly. “I tried not to.”

Steve took Bucky’s hands into this own, rubbing his thumbs along both flesh and metal knuckles. “ _I_ thought about it all the time. And it was terrifying. I knew we could never realistically be out and together, not in that time. But I didn’t know what else to want for. Once we were old enough to start thinking about marriage, I didn’t want to be with anyone else but you. And if that option was never realistic, what was I supposed to do?”

“I never wanted to face it,” Bucky replied. “I never wanted to give up the fantasy. It would creep in my mind every now and then, especially at night. Particularly on nights we spent together. I would lie there, with you in my arms, and the thoughts would come. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘How long do you think you can pull this off?’ ‘People are going to start asking questions.’ Normally I could push it all away, but there was this one night…”

Bucky took a shaky breath in and out. Steve squeezed his hands tighter.

“There was this one night, it just all hit me at once and I couldn’t shake it. It was just a regular day, sometime after your mom passed. We had spent the afternoon in Prospect Park wandering around so you could draw different landscapes and random people. We bought some candy on the way back to your apartment and it started to rain. We got soaked.” Bucky smiled to himself, Steve completely enthralled, having no memory of this specific day.

“So we finally made it back to your place and it was cold. Must’ve been sometime in the fall? Or spring? But you were shaking like a leaf, so we put you in some old long johns and I made you a can of soup. We just listened to the radio and ate and laughed for the rest of the afternoon. After you warmed up a little bit, we got in bed and fooled around as it kept raining.”

“I feel bad I don’t remember that at all,” Steve replied quietly.

Bucky shrugged again. “Like I said, it was just a normal day.”

“It must not have been if you remember it so well.”

“I just…” Bucky let out another shaky breath, eyes falling to his lap where his hands were snugly wrapped in Steve’s. “I think it’s the normalcy that got to me. After you had fallen asleep that night, I just watched you for a little while. And I was suddenly so overwhelmed. I knew I loved you before that, but something about that day and just being with you and sleeping next to each other…I knew I could spend the rest of my life like that. I knew I wanted to so fucking badly. And feeling that stronger than I ever had before, while knowing that we never could, completely ruined me.” He paused, contemplating. “I’m sort of embarrassed to admit this, but I was up that entire night, crying. I just couldn’t handle it, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what we were doing or how long we could fool everyone. I never wanted to think about a life without you, but I felt like I had to. I felt like I needed to prepare myself for the harsh reality of not ending up together.”

Steve didn’t respond for a long time. Not until Bucky finally looked up at him.

“That was the fall of ’38, wasn’t it?” Steve asked, the revelation evident on his face. 

Bucky’s stomach dropped and he hesitated, knowing what Steve was going to say next and very much not wanting to hear it. He lied, “I’m not sure.”

“You dumped me that October.”

Closing his eyes, Bucky slid his hands out of Steve’s grasp and rested his elbows on the table, head falling into his open palms. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t talk to me for weeks.”

“Steve—”

“Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on with you?”

“What was I supposed to say?” Bucky asked, sitting up.

Steve’s voice cracked as he answered, “anything.”

“I thought you didn’t remember this,” Bucky murmured guiltily.

Steve scoffed, irritated and hurt. “No, I don’t remember the nice day we spent together, but now I remember you suddenly pulling away and not knowing why.”

Bucky grimaced. “It didn’t last. I couldn’t stay away from you for long, no matter how much better I thought it would be for both of us.”

“That doesn’t mean it hurt any less.” Steve pushed his plate further away as he turned from Bucky and stared out the windows, shaking his head. “I must have completely blocked out those few weeks until right now...”

Bucky put a hand on Steve’s knee under the table. “I’m sorry, Steve. I’m so sorry and I still feel terrible about it. I should have talked to you, I just didn’t know what to say.”

Steve sighed and ran a hand down his face. He gazed out of the windows for a few more moments, his face slowly softening. “Well,” he turned to Bucky. “We’re talking about it now.”

“I was scared,” Bucky replied. “I was scared of how much I cared about you because what were we going do about it? I knew I was already emotionally fucked, but I thought if we ended things, it’d be easier for us in the long run. We could move on and live the lives we were expected to.”

“Buck, when have I ever done what I was expected to?”

Bucky smiled despite himself. “I don’t know why I thought it was gonna work. You’re the most stubborn human being I’ve ever met.”

Grinning, Steve just said, “yep.”

Bucky searched Steve’s face with wide eyes. “I love you, Steve. I always have, even when I do really stupid shit.”

Laughing lightly, Steve replied, “I love you too and I always have, even when you do really stupid shit.”

Bucky laughed. “Yeah, fair enough.”

They looked at each other for a few silent seconds before Steve said, “you’re right. We can’t change what’s already happened, we can only control what we do right now. Whether our paths were ‘supposed’ to be this way or not, it’s how it happened. We’ve gotten a second chance, Buck. And with more favorable circumstances than the first one. How many people can say that?”

“Not many,” Bucky answered gently. “And I want to make this one count as much as I possibly can.”

“It may have been a rough road getting here, but getting the opportunity to truly grow old with you? I’d do everything a million times over too.”

Bucky smiled shyly and leaned over, resting his head on Steve’s shoulder. Steve let his head rest on top of Bucky’s as they sat together, quietly.

“Imagine telling us at twenty where we would be at 100,” Steve mused.

“I don’t know,” Bucky replied, letting out a deep breath. “If you said sitting at a table together in our own place, cranky and old, but more in love than ever, I would’ve said that things went exactly as I always wanted.”  

Steve smiled to himself and kissed the top of Bucky’s head, breathing in the comforting scent of his hair. “‘til the end of the line, huh, sugar?”

Bucky shifted his head on Steve’s shoulder, smiling. “’til the end of the line, doll.”


End file.
